How Well Do Submarine Canyon Deposits Represent the Sediment-transport Events That Created Them?

Abstract:

Submarine canyons act as major conduits of sediment from shallow- to deep-sea regions, yet the sedimentary processes operating within them are poorly understood. This stems from the relative inaccessibility of such complex environments and therefore the difficulty of making direct observations. As a result, much of our understanding of the dynamics of sediment-laden flows in submarine canyons results from making inferences from the deposits that they leave behind in the geological record. This study tests how well geological deposits in the canyon can be used to reconstruct the flows that created them by comparing the sedimentary record on the floor, benches and walls of Monterey canyon, offshore California, with the sediments collected in sediment traps during flow events. The project makes use of systematic transects of precisely located push cores and vibracores that were collected using a remotely operated vehicle (ROV). The cores were collected by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) at approximately 300 m, 500 m, 800 m, 1000 m, 1200, and 1500 m water depth, with three of these in the vicinity of sediment traps deployed in 2002 by the US Geological Survey. Laser particle-size analysis of the grain sizes present in the push cores was directly compared to the grain size of deposits from the sediment traps, previously analysed using the same technique. A key result suggests that using deposits to reconstruct flows may not be as straightforward as previous studies have assumed. For example the size of sediment found draping the canyon walls can be very different from that collected in sediment traps at the same heights and locations. Two hypotheses are outlined to explain reasons for this unexpected sediment distribution: (1) The vertical sediment distribution is not uniform along the canyon transect, corresponding to differences in turbulence intensity as a result of variations in flow depth and distance from the canyon wall, and (2) flows or not erosive or depositional and therefore bypass sand down-system.